I'm a bit under the weather and so my mind isn't really serving up any good examples of what I'm guessing would be the opposite, a standard prepared ahead of testing the market for suitability via the "hard way." Do you know of any? Most of what comes to mind are stillborn messes like XHTML.

Broadcast TV? No hardware lock-in, accessible from range of equipment, only update was from B&W to colour.

Also the digital transition, which was a significant effort:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_television_transition_...

Standards that power Internet per se (not WWW) would be a good example.

It's hard to tell how much of the internet protocol suite could be said to be prepared ahead of time. There was a decades-long practical experimentation process during which several iterations were developed and in use in research settings, and this was coincident in time with many other implementations of networking protocols that powered what was done in the "real world" in commercial settings.

Now I'll grant it's possible that the IP suite was developed as an isolated set of standards divorced from those outside networking practices, but the timeline makes me feel like it's at least possible that there was some lesson-learning incorporated.

Of course, I wasn't involved and I don't know offhand. I'll have to do a bit of reading later for self-edification.

good example:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151214/07452133070/light...